War on Iraq – Page 14

The Sickness Unto Death

Published on March 17, 20071 Comment

As the crowds march against the war in Washington Majikthise finds this story of a soldier who died of despair at what he was asked to do by his superiors in Iraq:

Military ethicist lashed out at Gen. Petraeus in suicide note

New evidence has come to light about the suicide of Col. Ted Westhusing a military ethicist who committed suicide in Iraq in 2005, asserting that he would rather die than dishonor himself any further in a profit-driven war:

Now, a new article reveals — based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act — that Westhusing’s apparent suicide note included claims that his two commanders tolerated a mission based on “corruption, human right abuses and liars.” One of those commanders: the new leader of the “surge” campaign in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus. [E&P]

Robert Bryce of the Texas Observer obtained Westhusing’s suicide note which reads:

Thanks for telling me it was a good day until I briefed you. [Redacted name]—You are only interested in your career and provide no support to your staff—no msn [mission] support and you don’t care. I cannot support a msn that leads to corruption, human right abuses and liars. I am sullied—no more. I didn’t volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. I trust no Iraqi. I cannot live this way. All my love to my family, my wife and my precious children. I love you and trust you only. Death before being dishonored any more. Trust is essential—I don’t know who trust anymore. [sic] Why serve when you cannot accomplish the mission, when you no longer believe in the cause, when your every effort and breath to succeed meets with lies, lack of support, and selfishness? No more. Reevaluate yourselves, cdrs [commanders]. You are not what you think you are and I know it

COL Ted Westhusing

Life needs trust. Trust is no more for me here in Iraq..

Bryce confirms earlier reports Westhusing was particularly distraught by the corruption of the private military contractors.
Continue reading “Military ethicist lashed out at Gen. Petraeus in suicide note” »

There’s not really a lot to add to that is there?

“The attack on the convoy amounted to an assault. It was unlawful because there was no lawful reason for it and in that respect it was criminal.”

Published on March 16, 2007

So said the coroner today at the inquest into Cpl Matty Hull’s death in the Iraqi desert at the hands of negligent US pilots.

Isn’t it handy for those pilots that this verdict can have absolutely no practical effect whatsoever?

The terms of the Blair government-negotiated US/UK extradition treaty allow the US government to extradite any UK citizen from Britain into to American custody without their having to show any probable cause whatosever that an offence has even been committed, let alone that the intended extraditee is a bona fide suspect.

No, the US government’s say-so (and we know what that’s worth)
is enough for Blair and his minions to give up their own citizens to who knows what fate at whose hands.

The reverse does not hold true for US citizens, who may not be extradited to the UK or Europe, or anywhere else for that matter, without a hearing in a US court showing a] that a crime has been committed and b] that there is probable cause to believe that the accused may have had something to do with that crime.

The practical upshot of this is that the pilots whose gung-ho, shoot first, ask-questons-later attitude led to this killing and its cover-up will, like their their torturing colleagues in the CIA who’ve recently been indicted in Germany, Switzerland and Italy, be sitting pretty on their government pensions, sucking up the approbation of the wingnuts, thumbing their noses at justice, all courtesy of that obscene sense of American exceptionalism.

“They’re doing their part. Are you? Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship.”

Published on March 10, 2007

Over at the News Blog friends are pinch-hitting for Steve Gilliard, who’s just undergone open-heart surgery resulting from a dialysis-related heart-valve infection. This is one of the ever-present dangers of dialysis and the reason why I’ve been fighting it tooth and nail. All his friends and family and well-wishers from all over the world, and they are many, are united in hoping for his swift recovery. Let’s hope too he gets the kidney he needs soon, because the subject of donor kidneys in the US is a troubled one:

In the United States alone, more than 63,000 patients are waiting for a kidney, according to the National Kidney Foundation. The kidney waiting list of the United Network for Organ Sharing currently increases at a rate of 20 percent a year, and the list will be 100,000 to 150,000 patients long by the year 2010.

One of the excellent writers filling in at the News Blog is Lower Manhattanite, who I’ve always wished would start his own blog. Steves’ hospital stay got him thinking about hospitals, and veterans’ and military hospitals in particular, in light of Steve’s own interest in the topic:

[…]

That symmetry hit this weekend as I drove my kids to their Grandpa’s house for a visit. Grandpa lives not far from my folks in Southeastern Queens, and getting to his house takes you past an odd neighborhood called Addisleigh Park—a weird, little enclave in Jamaica where Black entertainers like Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and James Brown all owned homes. And just across Linden Boulevard from Addisleigh, was the big V.A. hospital—a mean, imposing place where sullen men drifted in and out for treatment that always seemed to be—well, according to them, less than good. Driving past there, I remembered the old OTB parlor and the bars dotting Linden along that brief stretch near the hospital—funny how those places wound up so close by, and how those places always seemed to be overfull of, to the point of spilling out onto the streets, of angry, apparently ill-treated men. There was a comic-book store us kids frequented on that block, and on those sojourns you would always hear the men carping and ranting a litany of V.A. hospital horror stories—sometimes in front of the aforementioned sad haunts, but also in the luncheonette/comic book store we hung out at where they’d come in for ciggies and cheap cigars.

“I got better care in the middle of the f*cking jungle than ten minutes from my house” I remember one gaunt, afro-ed outpatient growling to a friend at the counter one day. I Briefly dated a girl who lived in Addisleigh, and I noted one day sitting on her porch that we only seemed to see the patients coming in and out of the place–never employees, and how I never saw the doctors out on the Boulevard.

“They ain’t crazy.”, the girlfriend pointed out. “They come in and go out the back way, otherwise some of those dudes’d jump ‘em. It’s a rough place, and they hold the doctors responsible. One got f*cked up at the bus stop a few years ago, and ever since then, they go out the back door—and get the bus a few stops back ithe other way.”

I hadn’t thought about that conversation until this (Sunday) morning. What kind of treatment would lead patients to wanna whip a doctor’s *ss? And move not one doctor , but drive ‘em all to use a crappy back door near a loading bay for entry and egresss? I shudder to think of what had so many of those olive-drab clad vagabonds who wandered up and down Linden so incensed about that hospital. Well, at least I used to shudder.

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Happy International Women’s Day II – “The knife wasn’t for the Iraqis,” she said. “It was for the guys on my own side.”

Published on March 8, 2007

I do urge you to read Helen Benedict’s piece ‘The private war of women soldiers’ (Salon day pass required).

I remember reading and writing about reports of soldier on soldier sexual assault right back at the start of the Iraq war and I also remember wondering how, when they were attacking their own comrades the US forces could possibly claim its troops were spreading freedom and democracy.

Nothing’s changed since then; if anything the situation for women troops seems worse than ever:

As thousands of burned-out soldiers prepare to return to Iraq to fill President Bush’s unwelcome call for at least 20,000 more troops, I can’t help wondering what the women among those troops will have to face. And I don’t mean only the hardships of war, the killing of civilians, the bombs and mortars, the heat and sleeplessness and fear.

I mean from their own comrades — the men. Comprehensive statistics on the sexual assault of female soldiers in Iraq have not been collected, but early numbers revealed a problem so bad that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a task force in 2004 to investigate. As a result, the Defense Department put up a Web site in 2005 designed to clarify that sexual assault is illegal and to help women report it. It also initiated required classes on sexual assault and harassment. The military’s definition of sexual assault includes “rape; nonconsensual sodomy; unwanted inappropriate sexual contact or fondling; or attempts to commit these acts.”

Comprehensive statistics on the sexual assault of female soldiers in Iraq have not been collected, but early numbers revealed a problem so bad that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a task force in 2004 to investigate. As a result, the Defense Department put up a Web site in 2005 designed to clarify that sexual assault is illegal and to help women report it. It also initiated required classes on sexual assault and harassment. The military’s definition of sexual assault includes “rape; nonconsensual sodomy; unwanted inappropriate sexual contact or fondling; or attempts to commit these acts.”

Woohoo, a website. The usual Bushco, rubbing butter into a 3rd-degree burn. And it’s not even the best butter.

[…]

Unfortunately, with a greater number of women serving in Iraq than ever before, these measures are not keeping women safe. When you add in the high numbers of war-wrecked soldiers being redeployed, and the fact that the military is waiving criminal and violent records for more than one in 10 new Army recruits, the picture for women looks bleak indeed.

[…]

Having the courage to report a rape is difficult enough for civilians, where unsympathetic police, victim-blaming myths, and simple fear prevent 59 percent of rapes from being reported, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice. But within the military, reporting is even more risky. Military platoons are enclosed, hierarchical societies, riddled with gossip, so any woman who reports a rape has no realistic chance of remaining anonymous. She will have to face her assailant day after day, and put up with rumors, resentment and blame from other soldiers. Furthermore, she runs the risk of being punished by her assailant if he is her superior.

Read the whle article

All this in a combat zone too. Anonymous reporting is all very well for statistical purposes but it still means the perpetrators aren’t punished and can carry on raping, groping and assaulting with merry, military-sanctioned abandon.

Many women in front line infantry units are there because they need the money to feed their children or because they have no hope of further education funding or a career otherwise. They can’t afford to complain. They have way too much to lose.They’ll have to find some other way to equalise matters, In a place where everyone is wearing a sidearm there’s always the old Vietnam solution to the problem of a pestilent superior to fall back on. I wonder when news of the first Iraq or Afghanistan female on male fragging will hit big media?

Libby Guilty – One Down, Lots More To Go

Published on March 6, 2007

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Libby Verdict Reached

Jane says noon.

(By request I’m not linking directly to them to preserve their servers).

I’ll try to post here as soon as I hear. FDL’s getting hammered. They may decamp to Daily Kos. MSNBC has real time coverage it seems.

…Walton entering courtroom.

…Verdict has been reached on all 5 counts. No hung jury.

…Jury not in room yet.

…Jury now in.

…Juror 12 is foreperson.

Count 1 guilty
Count 2 guilty
Count 3 not guilty
Count 4 guilty
Count 5 guilty

-Atrios 11:39 AM